When Michael Lipsky (2010 [1980]) set out his stall in Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public services in 1980, his project was one that offered a lens through which research could be conducted while also being a ‘project of improvement’ (Brodkin, 2012). In Lipsky's (2010 [1980]) case, the project of improvement with which he was concerned centred on the idea of ‘redeeming public bureaucracies’ (Brodkin, 2012). While the work that has been presented at length in this book has not been directly concerned with a street-level view of bureaucracies in action from within bureaucracies, it has nevertheless illustrated research conducted at street level, concerned with the experiences of those who have had to engage directly with the bureaucratic in the form of the Irish welfare state. In this respect, this too has been an undertaking with two concerns. The first of these, which has been made plain throughout, has been to forefront and showcase lived experience as a form of knowledge. This has hopefully been achieved. However, in as much as what has been revealed may tell us something of the challenges those receiving state welfare can face, it is hoped that it can also begin to add to a growing body of scholarly literature that, when taken together, can be seen to be part of a project of improvement aiming to ‘redeem public bureaucracies’ (Brodkin, 2012) by illustrating some of the challenges of those who interact with them. For this reason, in this final chapter, I offer some thoughts and suggestions for what a project of improvement in the context of welfare might comprise. Far from exhaustive, these following paragraphs are intended to open up a conversation about the ‘doing’ of welfare, and about how it can potentially be done better and for the benefit of those who may need it at different times in the courses of their lives. The discussion, then, is necessarily broad, but, in the main, focuses on the research context. However, the general principles laid out will have relevance to other welfare states and particularly to those liberal welfare states of the Anglosphere, and so I retain the ‘shared typical’ lens used throughout the book. I start this conversation by introducing the idea of ‘stigma of public burden’ before moving to illustrate the possibility of a ‘developmental welfare state’.